What Kibaki's snub means for old Europe By MICHAEL HOLMAN
There is bad news for those aggrieved European diplomats whose complaints about being denied access to President Kibaki made headlines last weekend.
Goaded by the diplomats' grumbles, angered by the arrogance that lay just below the surface, and astonished by the apparent ignorance of the shift in international relations with Africa, State House let rip:
"The world has changed, and so have our priorities", the diplomats were in effect told. "The countries you represent are rapidly declining in importance. So stop trying to jump the queue. The President's diary is full. Period."
Diplomatic snub
It was a two-fingered diplomatic snub that doubtless sent the ambassadors into a flurry of activity, composing dispatches trying to play down such a frank dismissal. Yet the message at the heart of the State House response could not be ignored. The Kenyan worm has turned - at last.
For years the Kenya Government did the bidding of the bwanas in Britain and bosses in Washington.
Whether boycotting the 1980 Moscow Olympics or being soft on apartheid, whether making deals that turned Mombasa into a US navy facility, or allowing north-east Kenya to become a vast training ground for British troops, State House could be counted on to meekly roll over and comply with West desires.
Those days have gone. And in making it clear that Europe no longer counts in the way it once did, I suspect that State House is reflecting a widely held view.
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Ever since Kenya became independent, a steady stream of emissaries from Europe has beaten a path to the State House door, confident that it will open in automatic welcome.
Isay "emissaries", but only for lack of a collective noun to describe this gaggle of political has-beens and want-to-bes, junior ministers and smooth opportunists, and assorted influence-peddlers and sales people, all still shaped by the colonial past, all with one assumption in common: that a meeting with the native in charge was no more than their rightful due.
That access has ended and they are the casualties of a new dispensation. Whatever the failures and shortcomings of President Kibaki, he has identified the international political reality that followed in the wake of the economic changes taking place throughout the continent.
From Johannesburg to Juba, from Lagos to Lusaka, something dramatic is afoot. Fuelled by new oil finds, funded by cheap loans from China, and by returning capital from the diaspora, Africa's landscape is being transformed.
But it is more than new shopping malls and office blocks, paved roads and new ports, skyscrapers and airport terminals.
Governance is improving
Governance is improving. The military stay in the barracks - or are shunned when they venture out - and human rights are higher on the agenda.
@AB-Titchaz hapo kwenye maroon ndio naweza kuitaja kama maendeleo ya kweli. African governments to have teeth to bite and not be swayed left right and center
Source:
http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/What+Kibakis+snub+means+for+old+Europe+/-/440808/1382062/-/2098m9/-/index.html
